Reflections
by Ovo
Summary: Collection of short stories inspired by in game screenshots.
1. Reflections I

_**Reflections I**_

Warm relief flooded her system, mingling with the chilled adrenaline that had yet to ebb and wane. Still, it felt like an eternity before the woman in her arms began to relax, the tranquilizer taking its toll. Finally, as Talitha slumped against her, unaware, the commander carefully lowered her to the floor, setting her down as carefully as she could. Stumbling back, Shepard hit the crate behind her hard, slipping the short distant to the gangplank from her crouch.

Being called upon to talk down a suicidal Mindoiran had been a surprise. By and large, Shepard hated surprises, and this had been no different. Worse, perhaps; her connection to Talitha was tenuous at best – her ties to the colony had been cut, years ago.

Her part finished, Shepard studied Talitha's gun with detached professional interest. Girard and his men moved like ghosts, spiriting the girl away. At length, she compacted the weapon and handed it, harmless, to the lieutenant, exchanging paltry words.

Then they were gone. She wasn't, nor was she all there.

"Commander?" When she didn't answer, hollow footfalls crossed the distance. Alenko dropped to one knee beside her; she caught his hand before it reached her shoulder, flicking her gaze to Williams behind him, where she kept a safe distance, arms crossed.

"Leave me alone," she said, an edge to the words.

Her lieutenant glanced to the woman over his shoulder, then to the woman at his knees. Holding up his hands in acquiescence, he backed down, seating himself a safe distance between near and far. Ashley sighed, then plunked herself down beside him.

Shepard ignored them.

Digging up old ghosts wasn't exactly difficult. Burying them again was another story.

* * *

><p><strong>Working Title<strong>: _Reflections_

**Prompt**: _Talitha Hug  
><em>

**Original Note**: Needed to write anything, even if it sucks. Grabbed a Screenshot and went to town. Dropped it here as proof of having writ. Love I Remember Me, so I could write it a thousand ways and come up with a thousand stories - it's that awesome.

**Disambiguation**: This series is a personal speed-writing challenge based on screenshots. Alas, I cannot post the screenshots here, but I shall place descriptions in the prompt tab. :)

**Published**: On the BSN (May 5th, 2011).

_Derivative work of material © BioWare, Electronic Arts._


	2. Reflections II

**_Reflections II_**

The lifeless, ashen mesa stretched towards the horizon, under a sea of stars. Suspended delicately in the dark sky, Earth was at once tantalizingly close and so hopelessly far away.

The constant, subdued hum of the Mako's systems filled Shepard's ears, punctuated by Williams' rhythmic breathing. Out of habit, she kept half an eye on Alenko. His hands flittered over the Mako's haptic interface, casting deep, dancing shadows about the darkened compartment. Every so often, he fidgeted or stretched a bit or simply sighed softly... Didn't glow blue, didn't crush Williams' throat while she snored, didn't creep up beneath Shepard's kinetic barrier with a knife or a pistol, generally didn't register as insane.

_Mostly harmless_, for a biotic.

He fidgeted again, and glanced at her, almost as an afterthought. "You should probably try to get some sleep, Commander."

Lolling her head in his direction, Shepard took the opportunity to study him candidly. His hands hovered over the interface, frozen in place, as he met her brazen stare with a curious honesty. After a moment, she burrowed deeper into her field blanket, hooking her heels on the edge of her seat to arch her knees. "I'd rather not, if it's all the same to you."

"Suit yourself." Kaidan shrugged lightly, turning his attention back to the console. "How's the head?"

"I've had worse."

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me."

The almost comfortable silence again fell between them. From the relative comfort of her blanket, Shepard stared forward, watching the serene planet in the distance.

"It's beautiful," Kaidan said.

"I guess."

"...you guess?"

"Never been there."

"You're kidding me."

Shepard shifted under the blanket; he sounded genuinely astounded. "Born out on the farm, remember?"

"Yeah, but I thought everyone..." Kaidan caught himself, but in the dim light, Shepard could still make out the hint of a frown. "I... suppose I didn't realize we'd spread out so far, so quickly."

Without warning, Shepard sat bolt upright, boots thudding against the floor. She shoved the blanket to one side, while the other hand snaked towards her pistol. Kaidan's eyes flicked to her weapon before he met her gaze, this time questioning.

"Do you hear that?" she asked him.

Kaidan's brow furrowed. "Just because she snores doesn't mean she deserves to be shot, Commander."

"Not her."

"Then what...?" Kaidan's question met silence, paused as Shepard raised her hand.

It was difficult to hear, over the Mako's engine and Ashley's breathing, but it was there. As they sat, frozen, the obscured sound welled up, peaked, and ebbed away. After it had gone, they remained staring at one another, at a loss.

"It almost sounds..." Kaidan trailed off as another sound swelled, louder, echoing the first.

"Get her up," Shepard growled, nodding towards the still-sleeping Ashley as she crawled out of navigation. Whatever it was, it was out there, calling. The commander was determined to find out.

"If something was jamming the scanner, we'd get a signal it was jamming the scanner." "There's nothing out there."

* * *

><p><strong>Working Title<strong>: _-_

**Prompt**: _Shepard On Moon, Before Earth  
><em>

**Original Note**: I never heard the creepy planet sounds before I got the PC version. My TV was too small and I didn't hear a lot of things with the XBox. Not convinced they're rachni. Also, roving around on the Moon is the fantastic. Brrrrvroom!

**Disambiguation**: _I Love the Mako_!

**Published**: On the BSN (July 12th, 2011).

_Derivative work of material © BioWare, Electronic Arts._


	3. Reflections III

**_Reflections III_**

She rubbed her eyes, exhaustion creeping under her skin at the brief respite. A brisk round of stretching did little to dispel the feeling, but the acrid sting of dead salarian in her nostrils and the massed tangle of bugs on the far side of the glass kept her awake and on edge.

Shepard stood at the opposite end of the room, arms crossed, helmet clipped, watching the critters on the other side of the glass. Every once in a while, one of the big ones would abruptly slam against the glass, but the commander never so much as flinched.

Ashley wondered how thick that glass really was.

A slam startled her from her pacing as Kaidan replaced the maintenance panel of the console, having evidently finished patching the bypass. He keyed a sequence into the console before backing off entirely. "Good to go, Commander."

Ashley glanced to Shepard; without moving from her spot, the commander reached over to commence the purge. For a moment, her hand hovered over the panel; she pressed down, and the decontamination chamber flared to life. Shepard remained transfixed on the bugs as they thrashed and burned.

Seizing the opportunity, Ashley sidled up to Kaidan, who stood similarly mesmerized by the morbid display, and slid her fingers across his palm; he spooked, glanced past her at Shepard, then squeezed her hand in return.

"Hell of a way to go," she remarked, pulling her hand back. Kaidan crossed his arms.

"Yeah."

The blazing hellfire was soon extinguished by the system, revealing the scorched, scarcely nothing that remained of the bugs. Shepard unclipped her helmet, prompting both the gunnery chief and lieutenant to do the same. These days, Ashley would take what she could get.

* * *

><p><strong>Working Title<strong>: _-_

**Prompt**: _Kaidan and Ashley look like holding hands on Noveria.  
><em>

**Original Note**: So I went to burn some bugs, hit PlayersOnly, and, when I swung the camera around, some Alliance Marines were sorta totally holding hands. D'awww!

**Disambiguation**: Apparently they just hate bugs. They were doing it on Nepmos, too.

**Published**: On the BSN (September 17th, 2011).

_Derivative work of material © BioWare, Electronic Arts._


	4. Reflections IV

**_Reflections IV  
><em>**

It was a beautiful day, with soft cottony clouds and blue skies all the way to a green horizon. The grass-analogue underfoot was covered in a thin sheen of dew, sparkling under Vostok's light. None of this answered the mystery of what compelled Lieutenant Alenko to stand two inches from an almost sheer drop, but so long as he did his job, Shepard didn't care.

They had found their way _up_, now they needed to find a way _around_.

In the corner of her eye, Alenko half-turned, then vanished. She turned her head in time to see him slide out over thin air, the loose rock underfoot carrying him over the edge. In the same instant, Williams dashed from the cover of the Mako, making a grab for his arm as he fell against the steep slope. The weight of his fall and her momentum combined pulled her off her feet; she hit the ground chest first, the air knocked from her lungs in a heavy grunt.

"I gotcha." Their relief was short-lived. With nothing to anchor her, Williams began to slip forward. "_Shit_!"

Shepard put her foot down.

Securely pinned to the cliff's edge – or at least, no longer in immediate danger of plunging over it – Williams struggled to position Alenko safely over a nearby spur jutting out of the rock. Once he was safely clinging flat against the cliff wall, Shepard pulled her up.

"I'll, uh..." Williams moved as though to wipe the sweat off her brow, and was impeded by her helmet. Instead, she gestured in the direction of the Mako. "I'll get the cable. _Ma'am_."

After the gunnery chief had jogged off, Shepard glanced down at the biotic holding on to the bare rock for dear life.

"Can't you fly or something?"

* * *

><p><strong>Working Title<strong>: _-_

**Prompt**: _Kaidan falling off a cliff.  
><em>

**Original Note**: So... Kaidan slipped and fell off a mountain while I was trying to take pictures on on Nodacrux whoops.

**Disambiguation**: Have I mentioned that I love the Mako?

**Published**: On the BSN (December 1st, 2011).

_Derivative work of material © BioWare, Electronic Arts._


	5. Reflections V

**_Reflections V_**

The thing was in pieces scattered across the tarpaulin. There was no telling who made it, for what purpose, or whether it was some unknown synthetic lifeform that was going to spontaneously come alive and eat them all while Shepard wasn't looking.

Thus far, it remained a fairly innocuous scrap heap. Kneeling amidst the wreckage, Kaidan hunched over an exceptionally large and still intact chunk of... whatever the thing was, arm deep in metals, ceramics, and wires.

"Does Adams know your messing with his shit?"

"He got bored with it," Kaidan replied, matter-of-fact. "It's my shit now."

The lieutenant didn't look up as Shepard passed him. Finding the nearest crate, she reclined against the wall, quietly watching him work. At length, scarcely pausing to scratch his chin on the back of his wrist, Kaidan glanced in the direction of her pendulous boots. "Did you need something, Commander?"

Staring near his hands, Shepard didn't reply.

"Can't sleep?" he asked, a touch softer. She didn't answer that, either. At a loss, Kaidan distracted himself with a length of wire, easing it from its mooring before adding it to the pile.

"So... what's it like?"

Shepard's heels hit the crate square and held there.

"What's what like?" She was staring straight at him. Through him.

Drawing himself upright upon his knees, Kaidan returned her gaze openly, wiggling his fingers for metaphysical emphasis as he clarified, "The asari mind meld."

Slowly – determined – Shepard hunched forward, wrapping her fingers over the edge of the crate as her eyes clouded over. Kaidan grabbed his rag to wipe the grime off his hands, standing when the commander did.

She stepped past him, then paused; at once bewilderingly close and light years away. "Shepard-..."

"It's like standing on a cliff in broad daylight, but you can't see the bottom," Shepard answered, twisting naturally out of reach as his fingers nearly brushed her shoulder.

She cocked her head, deliberating for several long moments. Thickly, she added, "Then someone takes the cliff away."

* * *

><p><strong>Working Title<strong>: _-_

**Prompt**: _The Prothean Vision, Frame by Frame  
><em>

**Original Note**: This has been sitting around mostly-but-not-finished, because it didn't want to cooperate, despite the initial intentions of Reflections being a fast writing exercise. I blame my Shepard's obsession with regards to spacial orientation. Anyway. Slightly older idea, revived in equal parts by Genesis, since my Shepard finds people mucking about in her head very unpleasant, and by replaying the scenes in ME1, where you can imply as much.

**Disambiguation**: -

**Published**: On the BSN (September 12th, 2011).

_Derivative work of material © BioWare, Electronic Arts._


	6. Reflections VI

_**Reflections VI**_

Shepard pulled her helmet on, activated the pressure seals on her armor, and silently counted from ten. Ten seconds later, she stepped into the airlock, cut off, breathing within her own private atmosphere. Her suit's thermal-regulator kicked on as the outer hatch slid open and Nepheron's heat rushed into the chamber.

_Nepheron – A tactical strike against a rogue black ops. nerve center, _she mulled over events,_ Binthu – Rachni, creepers, a dead admiral. Edolus – Marines in a Thresher nest. Toombs. Should've known–_

Something moved in her peripheral vision, coinciding with a _ping_ on her scanner. In the same instant, she reached for her weapon; a _crack_ rang through her skull, magnified by an explosion of kinetic shielding, and she was knocked back. Her vision dimmed, obscured by the muted _shields down_ alert and damage report scrolling past her HUD. Through the haze of red and black, an indistinct blue blur flew upward into the sky.

"Negative contacts."

_Not good._ She'd been so wrapped up in her head, Shepard hadn't realized there'd been _one_. One that she must have missed, going in. The battle was over before she'd realized it'd started, except now her head was killing her, and the world wouldn't stop spinning as she was hauled off the ground. She tried not to lean on Alenko – he was still fuzzy and biotic – and found herself slumped against Williams.

_Suit rupture,_ Shepard read off her screen, squinting. She must have read it aloud, she realized, because Williams swore.

All the way back to the Mako, she felt as though she were walking on air; half-dragged, half-carried. Within the confines of the vehicle, she sprawled on the cabin floor as her marines scrambled to enable all systems and pressurize the cabin.

Startled as someone undid her seals and gently removed her helmet, Shepard realized she must have dozed off. Alenko pressed a breather over her mouth and nose, which she accepted, silently thankful, and held, breathing deep.

Gripping her chin, he stared at her intently; she glared back, ineffectual at best. Nevertheless, his attention turned, and he trailed his fingers along the side of her head, abruptly triggering a sharp spike of pain where he touched. She hissed, trying to swat him off. He tightened his grip, probing harder, before letting go and picking up her helmet.

"You've got a concussion and a mild plasma burn." He stood up, having to hunch under the bulkhead, and studied her helmet as he talked. "And your shield battery is dead. Good thing you were wearing the helmet for once."

_Because of the noxious atmosphere_. Shepard cleared her throat, rubbing in vain at the itch in her chest. Quirking an eyebrow at Alenko, she rasped, "I've got a thick skull."

"No kidding," Kaidan scoffed, dropping the helmet in her lap before moving up to the drivers' compartment. Shepard flipped the thing around, examining the ablated indent surrounding a pin hole that wasn't there before. "Too bad, too. All that padding and nothing to protect."

Lesson further learned and reinforced. _Dwelling on the past will only get you killed._

* * *

><p><strong>Working Title<strong>: _-_

**Prompt**: _One poor unfortunate merc tossed into the atmosphere.  
><em>

**Original Note**: In fond memory of the heroic Cerberus Grunt #46, who was brave enough after surviving his first encounter with Shepard to jump her when she emerged from the Cerberus compound on Nepheron, and even managed to get a shot in before Kaidan tossed him into the upper atmosphere and Ashley used him for target practice. Event dramatized.

**Disambiguation**: ... yes, it really happened like that. XD

**Published**: On the BSN (July 8th, 2011).

_Derivative work of material © BioWare, Electronic Arts._


End file.
